Thursday, October 10, 2013

Barry o gets exposed again

BULLY BOY PRESS& CEDRIC'S BIG MIX-- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O GOT A HUGE SPREAD AT THE COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS BUT IT'S NOT THE SORT OF TOPLESS SHOTS HE'S KNOWN FOR.

THE DAHLIBAMA'S PENDULOUS MANBOOBS WERE NO WHERE IN SIGHT AS A SCATHING REPORT DETAILED HIS WAR ON THE PRESS AND ON WHISTLEBLOWERS:“This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever
covered,” said David E. Sanger, veteran chief Washington correspondent
of The New York Times. The Obama administration has notably used social media, videos, and
its own sophisticated websites to provide the public with
administration-generated information about its activities, along with
considerable government data useful for consumers and businesses.
However, with some exceptions, such as putting the White House visitors’
logs on the whitehouse.gov website
and selected declassified documents on the new U.S. Intelligence
Community website, it discloses too little of the information most
needed by the press and public to hold the administration accountable
for its policies and actions. “Government should be transparent,” Obama stated
on the White House website, as he has repeatedly in presidential
directives. “Transparency promotes accountability and provides
information for citizens about what their government is doing.”But his administration’s actions have too often contradicted Obama’s stated intentions. “Instead,” New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote
earlier this year, “it’s turning out to be the administration of
unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press.”

"I really called the hearing so that we could get the best possible
information out to the veteran community," Committee Chair Jeff Miller
declared at the start of today's House Veterans Affairs Committee
hearing. Appearing before the Committee was Secretary of Veterans
Affairs Eric Shinseki. Along with the Committee members, US House Rep
Jerry McNerney (a former VA Committee member) questioned Shinseki.

Committee Chair Jeff Miller: Veterans want to know whether
they're disability checks and [G]I Bill benefits will be paid in
November and there after. They want to know if their disability claims
will be decided or further delayed. Families want to know if their
loved ones will receive a timely burial at VA national cemeteries. And
many of VA employees themselves want to know whether they'll be serving
veterans on the job or whether they will be furloughed. I understand
that answers to some of these questions are entirely dependent upon how
long this shutdown lasts. And although I want to be sure that most of
us want this shutdown over clearly, it's our responsibility that the
public especially veterans understand what the current state of play
is. First of all, Mr. Secretary, I want to say that in the last couple
of weeks getting good information about your contingency plans and the
effect of a lapse in appropriations and its effects on veterans has been
very difficult for us to get the information out of your office. For
example, the original field guide that VA put out regarding the shut
down impact at first spoke of no effect -- no effect -- on payment to
veterans or any of their benefits. But in a later version, VA stated
that a prolonged shutdown would effect both but didn't provide any
details of how it would be impacted. Second, the Veterans Health
Administration is not shut down at all because it has received a full
year's appropriation for 2014 back in March. So hospitals, clinics and
Vet Centers should all be open for business. Yet the President made a
statement the day before the shutdown saying that veterans will find
their support centers unstaffed and implied that counseling services for
veterans with PTS would be effected. Third, this Committee has been
consistently told by VBA's Overtime Mandatory Effort towards the backlog
would actually end on September 30th. Yet, days into the shutdown,
we're now informed that a shutdown prevented VBA's planned continued
payment of overtime. Fourth, although a shutdown should have a
relatively uniform effect across all regional offices, as suggested by
your own field guide, my staff met with several representatives from
VSOs last week who relayed that their members are hearing mixed messages
out of different regional offices.

There's a lot to unpack in that series of statements. First of all, it
doesn't help anyone when the President of the United States lies to the
American people in order to scare them. The VBA has the money to run
the hospitals and centers and has since March -- the money for Fiscal
Year 2014.

September 30th, in the James Brady press room, President Barack Obama declared:

Vital services that seniors and veterans, women and children, businesses
and our economy depend on would be hamstrung. Business owners would
see delays in raising capital, seeking infrastructure permits, or
rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy. Veterans who’ve sacrificed for their
country will find their support centers unstaffed.

Barack lied. Outlets carried his lies without a single question to
them. Even after the House Veterans Affairs Committee issued a fact
sheet, Barack's lies have still not been called out by the press. From the fact sheet:As President Obama stated in his Sept. 30 government shutdown
statement, will veterans find their support centers unstaffed in the
event of a shutdown?According to the Department of Veterans Affairs,
VA’s Military Sexual Trauma counseling services, Readjustment
Counseling Services and Veterans Crisis Line will not be affected by a
shutdown. Additionally, the following VA support phone lines will remain
open for business: VA National Call Center, Coaching into Care Call
Center, Debt Management Center, Homeless Prevention Line, Mammography
Helpline, National Caregiver Support Line, Women Veterans Call Center,
Vet Center Combat Call Center, Children of Women Vietnam Veterans;
Foreign Medical Program; Spina Bifida Health Care Program. Additionally,
all VA medical facilities and clinics will remain fully operational in
the event of a shutdown. As President Obama stated in his Sept. 30 government shutdown
statement, will a government shutdown keep veterans suffering from PTSD
from getting counseling services? According to the Department of Veterans Affairs,
VA’s Military Sexual Trauma counseling services, Readjustment
Counseling Services and Veterans Crisis Line will not be affected by a
shutdown. All of those services are equipped to offer veterans suffering
from PTSD with support. Additionally, all VA medical facilities and
clinics will remain fully operational in the event of a shutdown and
will be available for veterans with PTSD in need of counseling services.

Barack Obama lied to the American people (yet again) and the press
ignores it (yet again). It was fear mongering at its worst and, at
least when they were out of power, Democrats in Congress objected to
fear mongering, saw as the last resort of liars and manipulators. But
nine days ago, Barack did it and no elected Democrat has called him
out. Apparently, when you're out of power, it's very easy to have
ethics -- or at least give lectures on ethics, but when you have power,
you lose interest in ethics and ethical concerns. Well that certainly
explains the Democratic Party's war votes.

We have about 13,000 regional -- uh, benefits employees who are
doing what they always do and that's process claims as quickly and as
accurately as they can. With the end of mandatory overtime, we are
doing that at 1400 claims each day less than we were doing, uh, before
30 September.

But what Miller said, and Shinseki never contradicted, was that it was
always the understanding that overtime would be phased out at the end of
September. That was regardless of whether or not there was a
shutdown. The overtime program has been one scandal after another of
stealing taxpayer money. To quell Congressional outrage, the program
had a quick end date. For example, Mary Shinn, Daniel Moore and Steven Rich (Center for Public Integrity) reported in August:

While veterans waited longer than ever in recent years for their
wartime disability compensation, the Department of Veterans Affairs gave
its workers millions of dollars in bonuses for “excellent” performances
that effectively encouraged them to avoid claims that needed extra work
to document veterans’ injuries, a News21 investigation has found.
In 2011, a year in which the claims backlog ballooned by 155 percent,
more than two-thirds of claims processors shared $5.5 million in
bonuses, according to salary data from the Office of Personnel
Management.
The more complex claims were often set aside by workers so they could
keep their jobs, meet performance standards, or, in some cases, collect
extra pay, said VA claims processors and union representatives. Those
claims now make up much of VA’s widely scrutinized disability claims
backlog, defined by the agency as claims pending more than 125 days.

And let me point out again that there is no great reduction in backlog.
It's a con game. In many states across the country there are rental
storage facilities run by Public Storage. In New York, there is
Manhattan Mini Storage. Pretend you have a huge collection of books.
You've been tasked with going through the collection, currently stored
at Public Storage, and deciding which books to keep and which to get rid
of. Instead of doing that, making that determination, you decided to
move them to Manhattan Mini Storage. You can now claim that all the
books in Public Storage are gone. And, indeed, they are. But you
didn't do the job, you didn't make the determination. You played
kick-the-can -- a game Barack used to deride when he was a US senator
but now embraces from the White House. The 'reduction' is by giving
claims a temporary classification and sending them to another group to
be evaluated. In other words, a single-step evaluation is now a
two-step process (three if you count the temporary status).

"Since the shutdown began on One October, the backlog has stalled. and
in fact, has increased by about 2,000 claims," Shinseki insisted. "The
shutdown directly threatens VA's ability to eliminate the backlog.
We've lost ground we fought hard to take. Roughly 4,000 veterans a day
are not now receiving decisions on their disability compensation claims
due to the end of overtime." But overtime was ending September 30th
regardless. Shinseki is so dishonest.

Equally true, in the entertainment industry, we often have strikes. A
writers strike, for example, means producers not with the Writers Guild
end up doing writing (in addition to scabs and picket line crossers).
The VA has many employees on salary including Shinseki. If producers
can roll up their sleeves and write dialogue, I think in this situation,
Eric can roll up his sleeves and do some backlog work to earn that huge
salary. In fact, it would be a good idea to ask everyone in
administration with backlog cases. They might better understand the
hold ups and how to improve the process.

This is something that should have been implemented years ago. There's a
backlog. Every worker at the VA in management should know how to rate a
claim -- how else can they judge the progress. And knowing how to rate
a claim requires that management regularly do so. With just each
member of management and administration required to do one claim
evaluation a day, they'd be getting more than 4,000 done before you
included any work done by those hired to rate claims.

You'd also determine quickly whether or not the claims workers have been
working slowly for 'job protection' as many have alleged (including
some claims workers) over the last years.

Shinseki made a statement many outlets ran with -- after dressing it up
to improve it. Here's what he said, "If the shutdown does not end in
the coming weeks, VA will not be able to ensure delivery of 1 November
checks to more than 5.18 million beneficiaries."

Leo Shane III of Stars and Stripes, your job is to report not to 'improve.'
Before you whore again, here's a little tip, when the Secretary of a
Department says 5.18 million beneficiaries won't receive checks, they
got that number by lying or basic math. If they got it via basic math,
they know when the shutdown would have to end -- a date. "The coming
weeks"? Oh, no. That's not an answer. But wasn't it cute of you, Leo,
to cover for Shinseki.

Buried in his piece, Shane notes, "Shinseki could not give a precise
date when VA appropriations accounts would run out. " No, Shinseki
would not give a precise date. When you can give a figure of 5.18
million, if it's accurate (and it may be), it's accurate because you've
done a mathematic model. Equally true, the checks can all be printed on
October 30th and November 1st and sent out as they normally would
(according to two friends in VA administration). So that's 21 days.
Saying the shutdown can go on for 21 days doesn't present fear or
urgency that the White House wants and that's most likely why Shineski
dummied up on a date. (I'm also told there's the equivalent of a short
term loan process that the VA could use to cover those November 1st
checks even if the shutdown is still in effect.)

Shane also 'missed' the importance of this.

Chair Jeff Miller: So my question is in statements in years
past House and Senate regardless of parties and the White House have
always come together and tried to find a way to prioritize how much
money would be spent, who would be at the top of the list, just as we
started to shut the government down and run out of money. And today we
don't have that. Even back in the shutdown of 1995, there was a
prioritization and DoD and veterans were taken off the table which
they're not right now. So my question, Mr. Secretary, is don't you
think VA benefits should get the same priority or prioritization today
as it has in other shutdown situations?Secretary Eric Shinseki: I missed the last piece of your question, Mr. Chairman. In some --Chair Jeff Miller: Just basically, in years passed, we have in
fact prioritized spending needs -- DoD and VA has always been basically
taken off the table. And my question is: What's different this time?
And don't you think veterans benefits, in fact, should be prioritized
at a higher level than others in our government.Eric Uh, Mr. Chairman, I would just, uh, tell you this
Department has benefitted from, uh, leadership of the president and
leadership and support in the Congress. So if you look at what has
transpired over the last four years to our budgets, I think we can all
be proud of what we have done to take care of veterans and I will always
tell you that that's a top priority with me. Uh, but I do understand
that there is a budget request presented to the Congress, there is a
process that you referred to that requires a passage of the
budget within that the departments are then provided a guidance on what
their budgets will be. I'm not sure where the Congress is in that
process but I would ask the Congress, uh, to provide us a budget so that
not only this Department but our partners in government on whom we rely
to do our mission, uh, well, uh, can get on with business.

See, Leo Shane III, that was your story: "VA Secretary not willing to
fight for veterans benefits." Homeless veterans is a topic the House
and Senate Committee regularly address. When Kat
shares her thoughts on a hearing with that topic, she often notes that
there are millions of homeless people in this country who are not
veterans and it's a shame that Congress shows little to no concern for
them. Kat's correct, I don't disagree with her. But I don't bring it
up here because I expect, for example, Senator Patty Murray chairing a
Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs to make homeless veterans her first
priority among the homeless. Again, I understand Kat's reaction, I
support it, I agree with it. This country needs to address the homeless
crisis among the general population. But, again, I expect a Senate
Agricultural Committee to put farmers first and I expect that from the
Ag Secretary as well. Today, Shinseki was given the opportunity to put
veterans first and refused to. I think that's a story, I think it's
probably the most story out of the hearing (and one that will only lead
to louder cries that Shinseki needs to go).

There's much more that I would like to cover and maybe we can
tomorrow. (Though we'll be at two hearings tomorrow that I'll want to
include as well.) For the record, Leo Shane III wasn't the worst
reporter on the hearing. But he was bad and we call that out here.